


glass in the sunlight

by stellatiate



Series: anthologie [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternative Perspective, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-11 16:38:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7900018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellatiate/pseuds/stellatiate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6310565">I think, I first fell in love when I was in fifth grade with this boy who kept his glass ruler in the sunlight and made rainbows on my desk with it</a>." She catches the way Allura glances at Shiro, curious and wanting to speak, but holding her tongue. </p><p> </p><p>-—pidge; allura & shiro, s2. shallura week 2016.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. discovery, day one.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge becomes the first victim of the terror on a new planet and Allura and Shiro are not pleased.

“Aren’t you two going to pack anything?”

It isn’t Shiro’s voice that startles her. He gently tips her to one side and pulls an article of clothing from beneath her; Pidge squeaks and slides off of the edge of his bed, her cheeks burning. From across the room, Allura leans in the threshold of his door, her eyes bright and observant. Pidge is less afraid of those eyes than she used to be, the kind of eyes that see things that aren’t visible at all.

“I consider it a _high honor_ that we’re allowed to accompany you,” Allura says in a tone peppered with light sarcasm, “so I don’t need to waste any time bringing anything with me. Pidge?”

She remains silent for a while, her cheeks still fading in color. Then, “I can help you pack?”

Shiro sighs, and Pidge watches the way his shoulders slump, slightly uneven. And her eyes follow the metal lines of his arm, down to the fingertips as he reaches for something in one of his drawers to slide into the small duffle bag he’s planning on taking with them. His voice is low, but Pidge can only catch snippets of what he’s mumbling to himself, his eyes occasionally falling over towards where Allura is standing in the door.

The Princess looks as if she could be ready to take flight at any time, and Pidge suspects it isn’t all just a look. There is still a lot she doesn’t understand about Allura, though she wants to. It’s been a long time since she’s been around anyone she’s felt comfortable being herself around, and the way the Princess seems to find no fault with being impossibly intimate with the Paladins is slightly freeing.

Terrifying, but freeing.

Shiro slings the bag over his shoulder and adjusts the strap with a slightly hardened look in his eyes. Pidge knows it’s time for them to go, now.

…

Thankfully, it isn’t a far reach to the planet they’re traveling to. Pidge remembers the sequence of events to be this way: Allura had asked for a Paladin volunteer to go with her to investigate the presence of a foreign planet on their radar, and Shiro had volunteered.

After that, the rest of them had volunteered as well. Lance had unceremoniously thrown himself into Shiro’s back, wrapping his arms around him and yelling something about never letting go, and the worried look on Keith’s face had spoken enough of his concerns. And once Pidge had thrown herself to the volunteer list, she knew Hunk would follow suit.

But Pidge couldn’t just let Shiro go alone; sometimes, she looked at him and felt like the only piece of her brother was in the way that Shiro could curl his arm around her shoulders and ruffle her hair. Shiro made her feel like she could go back to her old life, like she could still be Katie with the long skirts and dirty sneakers and the cool video gamer tag. He was her piece of Earth until she could find her brother, again.

So in the end, Pidge is grateful when Allura picks her out of the rest of the Paladins to accompany Shiro. But even in the midst of their journey to another planet, she can feel the tension between the two of them. She doesn’t quite know what happened between the two of them the last time they went away together, just that Shiro came back and Allura didn’t, and the rest of the Paladins had been in an uproar afterwards.

All Pidge could see was that it had hurt him, another irreparably lost piece of Shiro’s resolve.

…

“A week here,” Allura says promptly upon disembarking the ship, though her eyes twinkle with interest at the landscape. Pidge is instantly reminded of documentaries of the Amazon Rainforest in South America, back on Earth. As far as the horizon goes is a sprawling forest and two distinctly worn paths within the entangled trees.

She steps forward before she notices it, walking towards the alcove of trees and tropical air before Shiro’s hand catches on her shoulder. “Pidge,” he says with a warning in his throat, and she shrinks until her chin touches her chest.

She catches the way Allura glances at Shiro, curious and wanting to speak, but holding her tongue. “We don’t know enough about this planet yet, Pidge.” Her eyes are more rigid than the smooth tone she offers the other girl. “Anywhere that we go, we have to go together.”

Pidge nods and takes several steps closer to Shiro. None of them speak, but she can feel the line of Shiro’s body slump into comfort at the proximity, and Pidge feels the _little sister_ setting return. From somewhere in space with an alarming distance from the sun, the horizon glows a faded orange. It reflects over half of the sky and trickles down onto all of them, rendering Allura’s hair an ocean of what Pidge remembers sunsets to look like. It makes Shiro’s arm press the glaring rays into Pidge’s glasses, making it difficult for her to look anywhere but the ground.

It’s the only way she notices the vines that wind their way around her legs, slowly and gently. Pidge freezes, though she wonders if there is sentience within the thick sleeves of vines because they move quicker the more she panics.

“Shiro—” She barely gets his name out before she sees the vines curling around his legs. It’s the last sight she sees before the vines crush her glasses, curling around her ears and through the thick crop of her hair to cover her face.

Pidge thinks she can hear Allura scream, too.


	2. recovery, night one.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A loud, raucous laugh meets their ears. “Humans! What a riot!”

Pidge can _breathe_.

It’s the first of many minor miracles before she realizes she’s no longer encased in vines, but she still cannot move. The world blurs past her eyes, an alarming feeling to her. She’s supposed to be able to see, even without the thin-framed glasses she always wears, and she _can’t_. Colors blot in front of her eyes and though she can’t feel the press of the coarse leaves on her skin, she still _cannot_ move.

But she can hear voices. There is an inflection there that she doesn’t quite catch, an accent amongst her captors. Pidge blinks as rapidly as she can manage and she can feel the tears rolling down her face. Fear is the first to bubble in her throat, then concern, and then regret.

“Shh,” someone’s fingers touch the side of her face, long and gentle, “I’m here, Katie. Don’t cry.” Pidge can’t move but the tears continue to slide down her cheeks, and the mantra begins again in that soft voice, with those soft hands. _Shh. I’m here, Katie. Don’t cry._

It’s Shiro. The fog seems to roll back from Pidge’s mind and she can piece it together. Shiro is kneeling beside her and stroking her cheek, trying to smear the tears away from her face, trying to comfort her. All at once, her body begins to come alive with a tingling sensation, as if all of her limbs have simply fallen asleep at once. Pidge keeps this thought in the back of her head with an increasingly high suspicion that it could have actually happened somehow.

She can feel her hands twitch and before she can try to move her mouth, Shiro grasps both of her hands in his and pulls her into his chest. It’s firm, but with the paralysis still not worn off, all she can do until she comes to her senses is listen to the wild pound of his heart in his chest as he hugs her.

“Hey, Pidge.” Her name rescinds into the depths of his mind, and she wonders what desperation made him use it. Pidge doesn’t dwell on how scared he must have been, especially since when she comes into focus that she notices Allura isn’t nearby.

“Shiro, where are we?” The words are in her mind but her mouth is still mostly slack, and all she manages to get out is a drunken slur that sounds similar to her query. With a set to her jaw, she tries to ask the question again, with slow spaces between her words and attempts to annunciate each syllable.

Shiro smiles, despite their situation. “I don’t know, Pidge. All I know is those vines have some sort of paralyzing salve in them. It makes sense that I was first to come to,” he flexes the fingers of his arm that aren’t human with a forlorn twist to his lips, “but Allura…” His voice trails off.

Pidge takes in their surroundings slowly. This is some domestic lodging, or a small piece of one. She is propped up beside a cot and there are rolls of knit straw on the ground. The door to the room is tauntingly close, but Pidge suspects that it isn’t such an easy access to the outside. There is a small panel of glass in the center of the door, though; she suspects that maybe they could break it, if they needed to.

She curls her fingers and when they obey, she smiles down at them. Small victories. “Can we get out of here?” Pidge turns her eyes towards Shiro, who seems to be assessing their surroundings carefully. There’s nothing that they could use to their advantage or even in defense, and Pidge knows at least that much.

They don’t really have time to think any further. The door flies open and the two of them shuffle back into the corner, Pidge turning her face into Shiro’s shirt.

A loud, raucous laugh meets their ears. “Humans! What a riot!”

She doesn’t want to look, but curiosity gets the better of her, especially when she feels Shiro’s body tense up beside her. The _creature_ standing opposite them is clearly not human. His body is muscled and thick, bronzed skin freckled with pock marks. His eyes are a fair grey, but it’s the bundled body he holds in his hands that attracts Pidge’s attention.

The hand that pokes out from the blanket is a familiar brown.

“Give her back!” Pidge yells, but doesn’t make a move from the corner.

The creature, who seems masculine enough but Pidge has learned enough through intergalactic space travel than to assume anything else, shakes Allura’s prone body in their grip as if she was a doll instead. “Your friend is okay,” they say, still laughing, “she just wouldn’t stop trying to fight us so we had to quiet her a little. She’s got some good blood if the vines couldn’t get her.”

Pidge can almost feel the anger rolling off Shiro, but the helplessness and fear drifting off of him, too. There isn’t much they can do in this situation except call upon a greater wealth of patience. But the creature tips his head towards Shiro, and Pidge realizes that he’s trying to give Allura back. His arms are only slightly extended, but it doesn’t take long for Shiro to pick up on it.

He scrambles to his feet and nearly trips headlong into the foreign body, catching Allura’s body. They make her look light—that, or the relief crumples Shiro’s bones—because he sinks to the floor with Allura’s body across his lap, his hands wrapped around her. He pulls the blanket away from her body and Pidge frowns at the side of her friend, unconscious.

“What’s the deal with you guys, anyway?” Shiro speaks to the creature in front of him, but his eyes are focused on the dim pallor of Allura’s skin, and brushing her hair away from her face. Pidge can tell when Shiro notices the angry red marks at her neck, because his spine straightens with fury.

From his place at the door, the creature grins. “Come. We’ll show you.”


	3. tradition, day two.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little more insight into the planet Airin.

Hako is the name of their gracious host, Pidge learns, and he is a male of the planet Airin. He leads them out of the room they’d been captive in, careful to keep his steps slow for Shiro who still holds Allura protectively in his arms, and throughout the maze of hallways. Something about their surroundings seems funny to Pidge, but it must read across her face because Hako stops in his tracks. He looks at her, tilting his head for a moment and allowing the top knot of black hair to shift to one side.

“We’re underground, young one,” he says, holding his arms open, “the Airini people have always lived underground. Without our _maile_ to guide us, we would never stay safe in the universe.”

Pidge’s curiosity wins out. “Your…”

“Our _maile_ ,” Hako says plainly, as if it was obvious, “you know. The vines that brought you here?”

Shiro chimes in quickly. “The ones that paralyzed us, dragged us underground, and hurt us? Yeah, sorry. Other planets don’t _have_ those.”

Hako, for all of the animosity in Shiro’s voice, still offers him a creeping smile. “The _maile_ has always been a little scared of new people. It certainly wasn’t a fan of that fancy galaxy cruiser you crashed onto our land.”

Pidge finds it easy to imagine the destruction of their ship at the hands of sentient vines, though she can already feel the disbelief when they tell this story to their other friends. In that moment, Pidge misses Hunk; the only Paladin with enough of an attention span to listen to the stories she told of her rowdy childhood days. Hako stops short and it takes all of Pidge’s energy not to crash into him.

“Speaking of that thing, we should probably take you across the way to where they’ve brought it. You, well—you might need to fix it.” If Hako’s face wasn’t already an even, tanned color, Pidge would suspect the beginnings of a blush to crowd the apples of his cheeks. “The _maile_ didn’t treat it very kindly.”

Hako leads them down a pathway wrought with vines and branches that arch high overhead. It doesn’t seem to be an appropriate time, but she’s slightly impressed with the advanced architecture of their underground nature society. Pidge is certain that she passes several hallways with tree roots protruding into the center and growing straight up, but it doesn’t shock her when their entire culture seems to revolve around a great tree and its resulting omniscient vines.

“Laeli has been looking at your ship since you have arrived here and if she can’t fix it, then there’s no one in the universe who can.” The sheepish smile on his face seems to be an apology. “You’ll have to come with me back to the surface, though. And to do that, you must trust the _maile_ to bring you through.”

His eyes are on Shiro and Pidge finds her way towards him as well. With Allura still in his arms, she can almost guarantee that he won’t go.

She doesn’t ask. “It’s fine, Shiro.” She says resolutely. “I can go with Hako to check it out and then we’ll be right back.”

The emotions flicker through his eyes in flashes; first alarm, then concern, and then despair. As much as she wants to stay, she knows it is more responsible for at least one of them to be free of the vines and watch over Allura. Somehow, despite Shiro wanting to protect her, she knows it is better if he stays.

So, she falls into step behind Hako.

...

Hako leads Pidge up a stairs into a room that looks entirely encased in vines. The sight of it turns over something in the bottom of her stomach, but Hako puts a friendly hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry it frightened you, Katie, but you don’t have to be afraid of the _maile._ ” Pidge tenses and opens her mouth to speak, to correct him, but Hako nudges her gently towards the open door.

She doesn’t speak anymore because she doesn’t think she can. Her eyes are focused on the vines and the way they curl out towards her, like a hand being held out for her to take. Pidge reaches her hand out to the touch the vines and then they swallow her whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _maile_ , if i've researched correctly, is the name of the vines they use in hawaiian leis. i've gotten a lot of inspiration from polynesian names and a little bit of culture so i hope it's all right. also i should be current on the prompts by tomorrow!


	4. bridge, night two.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Don’t look down, human,” he says with a cheeky smile, and marches across the bridge.

To say that the Airini vines didn’t react kindly to their ship was an understatement. Their ship, a modestly large rover, is rendered into several different pieces. From some of the books Hunk is always leaning over, Pidge thinks most of it is salvageable. However, her prowess with engineering is limited, so she simply frowns at the sight of it.

“It can be pretty scary, huh?” Hako says. Pidge can’t get over how tall he is; he’s even taller than Shiro, especially for someone who lives in an underground society.

He’s referring to the vines, though. The _maile_. Pidge glances back at the innocent forest landscape in front of her, the dark line of the sky in the background. It just strikes her that it’s only been their second night on Airin and they haven’t even uncovered any useful information. The vines, though they make for an interesting conversation starter, are hardly the pinnacle of knowledge on the Airini people, and Pidge knows that knowledge is power.

“Your planet doesn’t appear on the radar,” Pidge shifts between her feet, a habit developed from the sensation of the vines wrapping around her legs only hours ago, “why not?”

She can almost _feel_ the swell of Hako’s chest at her question, the way his dark eyes gleam with pride. “The _maile_. It protects us from vision and keeps us safe. Only those in close proximity can see us and it would be better if it’s kept that way.” She doesn’t miss the hardness in the back of his eyes, either.

In the dim, evening light, the vines look like thick ropes stretched across the trees, warped and harmless. Hako steps forward towards the clearing and grabs hold of a vine as it simultaneously grabs hold of him, and he disappears back into the matrix. Pidge thinks about taking a deep breath, but this time, she simply swallows down her anxiety and mimics Hako.

Her hand quivers in the light, and the vine curls around her wrist softly, an almost timid touch that feels human. Pidge closes her eyes simply so she doesn’t have to succumb to the darkness, and gets used to the feeling of the vines wrapping around her.

…

Hako leads Pidge down a different hallway from the one they’d come down originally, seemingly ignorant to the way her fingers climb over her skin anxiously. Parts of her feel like they have been conquered by the _maile_ , because she’d _seen_ things when it had pulled her down, and she feels the chill deep into her bones. She can’t quite shake it off, though; the lingering spectral feeling of invasiveness.

The door that Hako leads her through opens up into a vast room. Only Pidge realizes it _isn’t_ a room, because there is a gaping bridge that stretches for yards across the space. There is a door that she can make out on the other side of the bridge, and below it, there is a massive, rushing sound of water.

“Don’t look down, human,” he says with a cheeky smile, and marches across the bridge.

Pidge isn’t _entirely_ terrified of heights, but being closer to the ground is certainly better for her. She takes hold of the rope binding and inches her way out onto the wooden planks, ignoring the way it sways underneath her. Thankfully, Hunk isn’t here, and she’s safe from the sympathy nausea that she’d get from him; part of her, though, starts to miss his presence a little more than she can stand.

After a couple of steps, it’s easier for her to fall into a careful rhythm, the bridge rocking from side to side with each of her steps. “I suppose there aren’t too many people living here, then?” Pidge’s voice is swallowed up by the canyon below them, a tinny noise in the background of the flowing water, but Hako’s ears perk.

“You seem to still be so limited in the land of possibilities, young one.” With each level of condescension, Pidge wants to twist herself further and further backwards from him. She doesn’t want to acknowledge the possibility that Hako is completely right about her outlook on the world. After all, becoming a Paladin had been a means to an end at one point in her mind; life on Earth had seemed so absolute and now there were so many other places around the world.

The other end of the bridge seemed so far away, but Pidge finds herself on solid ground quicker than she expects. Hako pushes the doors open in front of her and Pidge’s jaw drops slightly.

For once, the smirk on his face seems highly, _highly_ warranted.

Behind the doors doesn’t seem to qualify as a room, because as far as Pidge can see, there is no end. Above her head, the entire sky seems to be wreathed with branches overhead, but a moon is glowing in the night sky between the mosaic of vines. The horizon is almost completely visible from where she’s standing, except for the feeling that they are inside of the hollow of vines that seem to be connected to everything. And even though there is a door behind her, this area completely dwarves the small, earthen-worn area that she, Shiro, and Allura had found themselves in upon their arrival to Airin. There is dirt beneath her feet and Hako is standing on the origin of a lightly outlined path that twists down in front of them. From a distance away, Pidge can see the winding line of homes along the night sky as far as she can see. It extends in an a way that seems infinitesimal, that reminds her of moments stretched over an atlas, staring at the flattened image of the globe and knowing she was a small, insignificant piece of it all.

Suddenly, Airin seems so majestic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was nervous writing these chapters since shiro and allura were absent, but they're going to be obnoxiously present from hereafter. thanks for bearing with me!


	5. duty, day three.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She feels dusty and dirty, but she curls herself underneath the weight of Shiro’s arms, and listens to the sound of Allura’s gentle voice full of questions. Sleep finds her quickly, and mercifully.

It doesn’t feel late, but Pidge walks down the pathways in this newfound village until the sun brims close to the edge of the sky. Hako doesn’t seem any less tired for the efforts, and is more than happy to show her the way. She doesn’t have to ask because Hako already assures her that Shiro and Allura are safe, and are currently staying with the ship’s mechanic, a ‘friendly and charming girl’ who isn’t put out by the extraterrestrial company.

A smile cracks across her face at the thought of being an alien to another planet. Voltron has changed so much for Pidge and this is just another small, humorous thing.

Laeli’s home is crafted similarly to the others; it is a cobbled brick house with two stories and a considerable amount of space. Hako holds open the wire gate for Pidge as she walks by, and he doesn’t even knock as he enters the home.

The domesticity of it rears up in Pidge’s face, to the point where she feels her body recoiling on instinct. She’s greeted immediately with the sight of paintings rendered in the likeness of a tall, Airin woman; her hair is dark and wavy and her left ear is pierced with a thick spike. Her smile seems to find its way into her eyes, even in the painting. There are smaller ones along the walls of similar looking people, children, and other things that Pidge might be inclined to call pets. The staircase in front of them is lit with the glow of a small sconce at the top of the stairs, so when Laeli appears at the top, squinting through the darkness, it doesn’t catch her by surprise.

“I’ve never been happier to see you,” she says roughly, thumping down the stairs. Each loud pound causes Pidge to flinch, because it’s still _late_ and they should be _asleep_ , but Laeli rubs her eyes and pushes a yawn down. Hako raises an eyebrow, but she grumbles as she reaches the bottom. Her eyes, clear and grey, lock onto Pidge’s.

Her expression is a little callous, her hands tucked into the sides of her loosely threaded night clothes. “Your friends,” she says with an animosity that Pidge starts to suspect is just built into every one of the Airini people, “they aren’t very sound sleepers.”

Pidge’s face immediately softens and looks towards the stairs. Her hesitation is met with a nudge from Laeli, insistence.

“Please,” she waves her hand, covered in the same pock marks as Hako, “go to them. They’ll be happy to see you.”

The stairs seem to be an even worse obstacle. Pidge’s heels ache but she simply tiptoes up the stairs, ignoring the noises. It doesn’t seem strange to her that sleep doesn’t come easy to them; especially to Shiro, whose list of terrors is as long as the night. Pidge wanders down the small hallway until she can hear their voices, hushed whisperings in the twilight.

When she pushes the door open, tears prickle at her eyes immediately. Allura’s eyes are faded in the low light and her back is propped against the wall. Even with the small threads of sunlight drifting in, Pidge finds it hard to make out the outline of Shiro against her. His back is pressed into her chest and her fingers are skimming along the cold metal of his arm, watching the violet light of it fade in and out. The same loose clothes that Laeli wears in the dull grey are the same clothes Allura and Shiro wear, a small entangled mass of clouds hanging low in the room.

Pushing at the tears on her face with the balls of her fists, she sinks into the hardwood floor and crawls her way over to her group of friends. Allura’s eyes are like little lights in the dawn, and her voice is gently caressing a lullaby. She tries to make out the expression on Shiro’s face once she gets closer, but it’s hidden in the perfect amounts of shadow. Pidge can still hear his voice, though; low and whispering and fighting the temptation to sleep.

She feels dusty and dirty, but she curls herself underneath the weight of Shiro’s arms, and listens to the sound of Allura’s gentle voice full of questions. Sleep finds her quickly, and mercifully.

…

When Pidge wakes up, she’s tucked beneath sheets and swallowed up into the softness of a pillow.

“Hey,” Shiro’s voice comes from beside her, and she can feel her heart slow down a little more. Blinking the sleep from her eyes, she threads her fingers through her bangs and squints at him. Her index pushes into her nose before she realizes she hasn’t been wearing glasses for quite some time, and sits up with a frown. “How are you?”

Pidge shrugs. “How’s Allura?” The princess is lost in a swath of blankets nestled beside Shiro, though the Black Paladin is careful not to move too far away. Pidge suspects that it’s the only reason Allura can sleep for the time being.

“Better,” he says, though Pidge doesn’t miss the way his eyes trace over her throat. Even from her shroud, Pidge can see the fading marks of the vines. “That _Hako_ says that Allura punched one of their friends pretty hard. Apparently the vines didn’t like her for that.”

It makes sense to Pidge. It’s dangerous, but she’s starting to understand the hivemind behind the _maile_ , and it hadn’t killed Allura when it easily could have. Benevolence seems to be somewhere in the list of attributes that she’s created, behind _sentient_ and _pensive_. Allura’s strength, as well, seems to always come as a surprise to everyone she comes in contact with. The smile on her face seems to confuse Shiro a little, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he scoots back towards Allura and sighs, passing his hand across his jaw.

“When are we going to get out of here, Pidge?” He sounds exhausted. She suspects he hasn’t slept at all, though Pidge thinks it seems to be somewhere around midday from the way the sun is tilting through the windows in the room. It scares her, the way that Shiro’s mind has such a strong hold over his body; in battle, it is his greatest asset.

Looking at the way his eyes scan back and forth makes her think it is his greatest weakness.

“I don’t know.” Pidge sighs, and stretches another careful yawn behind her hands. “The ship isn’t looking so great. I suppose it might stretch our week out into two? But I can’t say.” The image of Laeli pops up in the back of her mind, the cranky Airini woman who was supposed to be fixing their ship. Hako had spoken highly of her, and it comes to Pidge next that Hako must have some sort of responsibility over them. After all, it can’t have been the first time someone stumbled across Airin through their space travels.

There must be a _reason_ why part of their planet is sectioned off away from its people.

Before she can mention anything, Allura stirs beside Shiro. Her hair is loose and unrestrained around her face, a smoke cloud against her cheeks. Even when she rakes her hands through the curls, they spring back at her in defiance. She blinks once and then turns her attention to Pidge.

“Hey,” her voice is raw and Pidge’s gaze falls onto the fading bruise again, “you’ve slept.” If Allura wants to address the intimate tangle they’d all fallen asleep in the night before, she doesn’t. Instead, she takes a deep breath and gets to her feet.

Shiro immediately jumps to his feet, watching her intently. Something in her eyes speaks without her voice, because Shiro’s shoulders collapse and he takes a step away from her.

“We have to be better guests,” Allura says easily, her voice a sliver less commanding with its weak timbre, “because this could still be far worst. We aren’t prisoners and we haven’t been treated badly.”

Shiro rolls his eyes. “You weren’t treated _well_ , either.”

Allura’s voice raises, just a slight pitch. “I didn’t treat them well, either.” Pidge can only imagine what the day had been like after she’d left Shiro and Allura, the latter of which had been unconscious for almost an entire day. What they had gone through and how they’d even made it to Laeli’s home. How long had Shiro been awake for? How worried was Allura when she’d finally come to her senses?

“Can we just take it easy for a little while?” Pidge’s voice sounds unbelievably small and it’s because she doesn’t want to cry. Being overwhelmed often presses her anger or fear into sadness, and now is certainly not a time to begin crying. Both Allura and Shiro seem to sense this, because neither one of them argue.

Across the stretch of blankets, Allura reaches over to pat Pidge’s knees, smiling warmly. “Of course we can.”


	6. sacrifice, night three.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It seems almost painful to hold that much control of the things that hurt, but it only makes him look strong. It seems like Allura knows much better.

“You should be resting.”

Shiro stumbles upon them kneeling at a low table in Laeli’s home, the sunset warming their backs. Pidge doesn’t pay him any attention, though; she and Allura are deeply engrossed in a game that seems to be a cross between tic-tac-toe and checkers that Hako has given them to play with.

“Funny who’s talking,” Allura says, and slips her black chip into the slotted maze of the game board. Pidge doesn’t even glance over at Shiro, though she’s sure if she focuses closely, she can _hear_ the disapproving frown in his voice when he talks.

The lie comes out just as easy. “I’m not tired.”                                                            

This time, Pidge wedges her gold chip into the maze, watching it bounce on top of Allura’s before she gives Shiro as much of a stern look as she can muster up. Her face is still round in so many places, delicate and feminine and not quite the menace that she wants to be. Still, though. Pidge knows how to work around those things when it’s for someone else’s benefit.

Allura eyes their game warily, her eyes twinkling with the same look she’d had when she’d won two matches ago. But she abandons the winning move, getting to her feet slowly. Earlier in the day, they’d gone out to where they wash their clothes in this section of the village, but Allura had instead opted into wearing some of the clothing they’d procured for her here in Airin; the long, flowing gown ripples dramatically once she starts to move across the room.

Her voice isn’t quiet at all, but her words contain a privacy that makes Pidge flush. “We can sleep together, you know. The—the nightmares, they don’t bother me.”

And it isn’t quite a secret. The depths of Shiro’s fears lie deeply seated in his mind, so it makes sense to Pidge that the only way they manifest is in his subconscious. The rest of Shiro is too powerful to let anything that weak flow through him except without his control. It seems almost painful to hold that much control of the things that hurt, but it only makes him look strong.

It seems like Allura knows much better.

Pidge glances at the way the princess grabs his wrist; Allura is always touching his arms, especially the one that he seems to despise so much. The prosthetic always appears so cold and unyielding, but she is always careful to be gentle with her touch. Pidge wonders if Shiro thinks of it that way.

His cheeks are a soft pink, but he doesn’t challenge Allura any further. It is a small mercy, because getting caught in another fight between the two of them is the last thing on Pidge’s list, especially when both of them seem to have stubborn and perseverant as dominant personality traits.

“Fine,” Shiro says quietly, moving to turn but Allura’s hand still maintains his careful grip on his wrist. It stops him from leaving, snagging him long enough to cause him to look at her.

Pidge looks away from the two of them and back to the game board. Now, it’s _definitely_ too private.

…

Peeling out of her clothes, Pidge finds a chest full of clothes that Laeli had mentioned when she’d stopped by earlier in the day. The Airini woman had been much more cheerful then; she’d been dressed in a jumpsuit that had given Pidge the impression that she was on her way to working on their ship, with a voice that sounded far less angry when fully awake. Most of her clothes seemed to dwarf Pidge, who was already short and thin. But the further she looked, the more she could find to work with.

Slipping on one of the oversized shirts and tiptoeing towards their room, Pidge sighs. Hako had been back earlier and entertained her with a game, ironically enough, that he’d told her belonged to humans called _Connect Four_ , but she’d been mostly up to her own devices throughout the day. Laeli’s home was full of information, full of books and relics of the Airin village they were in, and full of insight to the great, wide planet that was out there. It hadn’t been her intention to set out to spend the rest of her day reading, but it had happened nonetheless, and she’d felt almost relaxed afterwards.

She shouldn’t be surprised to hear noise coming from their shared bedroom, though.

“Stop being stubborn.” Allura’s voice, firm and punishing. Terrifying. “You should know better than anyone that you don’t have to do anything alone, now. You’ve basically guaranteed it to be impossible.”

Pidge inches closer to the door, strains her hearing through the silence.

“Sharing it doesn’t make it easier, Allura.”

“Neither does keeping it to yourself, unless you want everyone else to watch it eat you alive.”

There’s a noise that Pidge can’t put a name to, but she knows it comes from Shiro. It sounds almost like a gasp, but exhaled in the same surprised breath. As if there are words he meant to say but could only whisper instead. Something shifts because she can hear the noise of it, and Shiro’s voice is muffled by something.

“Stop—”

“ _You_ stop,” Allura answers back.

Pidge opens the door abruptly. Allura can’t stop mid-motion; the pillow in her hand slaps the side of Shiro’s head, ruffling the white tips of his hair, and turns. Both are dressed in the same white, nondescript clothes they’d worn previously, Allura’s colorful gown discarded somewhere in their room.

“If you don’t go to sleep tonight, Shiro, neither will I.” Pidge scoots across their nest of blankets until her knees touch him, pressing the sharp points into his thigh.

It is the beginning of a revolution, because Allura throws herself across the blankets and scrambles into place at Shiro’s side. “Me neither. I think I can give up a night of sleep if it might entice you into sleeping, too.”

 Shiro turns his head from side to side, looking between the two girls. For a moment, Pidge thinks he’s going to relent. She’s found many ways to get her way from the other paladin, especially because she’s crawled herself into one of his soft spots, but Shiro simply folds his arms over his chest stubbornly.

Pidge doesn’t mind the lost sleep.


	7. distance, day four.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next step in their experience is a little more risk than expected.

Right before the sun comes up, Pidge treks downstairs to retrieve all of the pieces of the _Connect Four_ game she had been playing earlier in the day. The pieces should still be scattered along the low table where she and Allura left them, and it’s the last thing she can think of to occupy their time. It had seemed like a heartwarming idea to stay up with Shiro, but he was clearly more experienced in the way of all-nighters, and Allura had fallen asleep once the moon was but a small disc in the open, night sky only to wake up right as the sun rose.

The golden and black chips were where they’d been left, so Pidge stoops down to gather them together.

“Katie!” The voice causes her to stumble; Pidge bangs her kneecap against the edge of the table and watches a stack of chips hit the floor with a clatter. Her brain takes several more seconds to identify the voice; Hako closes the front door behind him with a grin. His hair is loose around his shoulder in dark waves, a contrast against the bright yellow shirt he wears.

Pidge hasn’t corrected the use of her name yet, and it seems a moot point. After all, she prefers him calling her Katie rather than just _human_ , in the way that implies she is simply a disposable member of another planet. “Good morning, Hako,” she squints and brushes her bangs from her eyes, “is it morning?”

His answer is a loud laugh. “I just came from checking in with Laeli. I hope you’re all treating her home well since her brothers are away.”

It makes a little more sense to Pidge. Laeli’s home is big enough for at least four people to live comfortably, even though Pidge has only ever seen Laeli herself. Pidge suspects that her brothers aren’t exactly away, as much as they may be somewhere else while the humans inhabit their home.

“Allura likes to clean and we’ve borrowed some clothes, but until I get on better terms with the ladies at the bathhouse, we’re out of a little luck.” Laeli herself had given Pidge a small tour of the immediate area with the precursor that many small sectors of Airin were structured in a similar fashion; the center of the town revolved around the bathhouse, a large style building that functioned like a hotel and restaurant combined.

And, of course, the bathhouse around the back of the building.

Many of the Airini people that lived in the hotel also worked at the bathhouse, cleaning and chatting with one another while patrons came and went. Everything in their village didn’t seem to have any monetary value; when Pidge had brought her clothes with her to the bathhouse with Allura in tow and began to utter her speech about not having any money to pay for the facilities, the dark-skinned Airini girls had just laughed at her and ushered her through the doors.

It had taken some getting used to; eating at the restaurant only required free time and free space, and everything seemed to run smoothly for them. Part of Pidge was jealous upon those observations, but they’d built their civilization at the price of many other luxuries, one being the obscurity with which protected them from outsiders.

Either way, they’d managed to make their way around. She had Laeli to thank for that, so the least they could manage to do was keep her home in decent shape.

“How’s the ship?” Pidge rubs the edge of her knee and hopes a bruise doesn’t come to settle across her skin, instead opting to scoop the chips from the game off of the ground.

Hako smiles. “Laeli thinks she should have it done by tomorrow. She wants to have the three of you come look at it tonight, preferably, so she can discuss some modifications.”

The idea makes Pidge’s stomach knot rapidly. The _maile_ hadn’t hurt her in any way when she’d gone through it with Hako. Something seemed to tell her that it was going to be difficult to get Shiro through the vines, especially if they had to bring Allura with them.

“I’ll talk to them about going.” Pidge can’t promise anything; she can picture Allura being open to the idea of it, albeit nervous. But Shiro is a stubborn force all his own, and the idea of bringing them back to those vines only a few days after they’d been forcefully dragged through them seemed almost scarring.

She didn’t want to add to the list.

Hako didn’t say anything further about it. Instead, he crossed the space of the room to help Pidge pick up the rest of the chips she’d dropped on the floor from earlier. They’d gathered them all together by the time she heard the sound of someone coming down the stairs.

“What’s taking so long?” A yawn stretched in the middle of the question, Allura’s face filtered into view soon after. Still fighting the grip of sleep, her eyes crack open with a little extra coaxing. She glances over Hako’s shape casually before walking over towards the two of them. Allura’s hair is stuck in a braid, wound into a careful bun on her head; wisps of her hair fall down against the edges of her cheeks.

“I was just telling Katie that Laeli wanted to show you the modifications that she made to your ship.” Allura’s gaze is full of questions, especially when she hears Hako use her name, but Pidge simply ignores the flush of her cheeks and gathers all of the chips in the box the game had been given to her in.

Allura watches Hako deposit the rest of the chips in the box as well, but she lifts it out of Pidge’s hands as soon as he does. “Where is it?”

“We’ll have to go through the vines, Allura,” Pidge says firmly, pushing herself to her feet and rubbing at her knees. “The ship is where we left it, but in order to go back, we have to go through the vines.”

The idea seems a little ill-advised to the princess, but she doesn’t say anything in direct contradiction of their plans. Instead, she turns to look at Hako. Her eyes are so piercing in the sunlight that drifts through the windows, now; being dressed in all-white renders Allura into a powerful, glowing beacon.

“Is it dangerous? The vines?” Pidge sees Allura’s fingers twitch and knows they want to reach for her neck, where the skin was still soft and slowly returning to color.

Hako’s eyes are no less malleable towards Allura; they contain the same hardness Pidge had found in them the first moment they’d met. “The _maile_ are not dangerous unless you pose a danger to them. Or to us.”

It makes sense. All Pidge knows is that Allura hadn’t succumbed to the paralyzing salve and had hurt someone else in her fury, but even Pidge had made it through the vines. It seemed that volunteering to go through the vines or _trusting_ them seemed to deactivate those particular side effects.

Allura sighs, resting the box of the game against her hip. “We’ll have to convince Shiro that we should go. It’s not too far away, right?” Hako nods, watching Allura with a newfound respect. After all, the _maile_ had given an indicator to Allura’s strength when she’d had to be taken with much more force than the two of them. Pidge figured that was enough to cause Hako to see Allura the way most of the other paladins saw her—a formidable ally.

“Then we’ll go.”


	8. journey, night four.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spying on Shiro and Allura’s conversations when they think she isn’t around seems to become a new hobby for Pidge.

Allura’s grip is soft as she reaches for Pidge’s wrist, pulling her gently. They’d been tidying up Laeli’s room after she’d whirled through the home earlier that day, drenched in sweat and dirt. Pidge releases her hold on the folded clothes in her lap, eyeing the wooden chest where they belong for a moment before turning her attention to Allura curiously.

 “Let’s go,” is all she says, and tugs gently again at Pidge’s wrist.

…

Thanks to Allura, Pidge leaves Laeli’s house wearing a baby doll shirt so large that it becomes a dress on her body. The peach color would wash out against her skin, but all of the Airini people are dark-skinned, and watch Pidge as she walks past them. And though she keeps her head ducked, it’s Allura at her side who waves and greets everyone who passes them that draws the attention.

She wears a similar color to Pidge, though it offers the contrast against her skin that it should. Allura holds onto their shoes as they walk through the village, smiling and waving at everyone that passes her on the way to the bathhouse. It isn’t a far walk, but Pidge can’t help the flush on her cheeks at the feeling of the dress around her knees. It isn’t the same as wearing an oversized shirt because there is something distinctly feminine about the airy material of the dress.

The women standing at the bathhouse doors are the same that always laugh at Pidge when she comes by; there is never anything malicious about their laughter, but there is a touch of something out of place, like a joke Pidge doesn’t quite get. They are a few shades lighter than Laeli and Hako, but their skin is covered in the familiar pockmarks of the Airini people. The two of them bear a striking resemblance to one another, with short crops of wavy black hair and dark brown eyes.

“Back so soon, young one?” The one on the left croons towards her.

“You brought a friend?” Her mirror asks.

They glance over Allura curiously. It isn’t the first time that the Airini have given attention to the princess; after all, she nearly blends in with a majority of their people. Allura seems to take advantage of this more than usual, except Pidge knows that she could even take it a step further with some well-placed Altean diplomacy. Pidge wishes she could change her skin to fit in at this moment, too.

“We’d like to use the facilities, if that’s all right.” Allura swings their hands back and forth; the blush on Pidge’s cheeks is magnified tenfold when the two of them glance down at their hands.

One of the girls opens her mouth to say something, but someone rounds the corner out of Pidge’s vision. “Hey, if it isn’t Katie and friends!” She doesn’t have to look, but she turns anyway and fixes Hako with a glare. “Nice threads, Katie!’

Her name seems to trigger a realization between the girls because the two of them both start laughing, a tinkling noise that they don’t even bother to hide.

“Sure, go on in,” one of them says, holding towels out towards Allura, and Pidge’s eyes are trained on the ground so she doesn’t figure out which of the two speaks. Allura pulls her forward with a smile aimed at the two of them, but her grip around her wrist is insistent. It reminds Pidge of the way her brother used to pull her when they’d run errands, with her nose buried in a book and wandering aimlessly behind him.

The bathhouse isn’t as clouded with steam as Pidge expects. There is a path that winds past the double doors and splits; one of the signs depicts a squat, animated picture of an Airini face with a stud punched through both ears but Pidge sees the Airini women walk down the other path, where the picture is the same face but smiling, with sharp teeth poking between their lips.

It doesn’t entirely make sense to Pidge, but she doesn’t question it; she follows behind Allura down the path until the steam begins to waft towards them. Past the next set of doors is the bath, set into the ground and bubbling with a heat source Pidge can’t identify.

“See? It’s nearly empty,” Allura says, giving a side glance to the other two women immersed in the warm water, chatting to one another. The princess approaches the edge of the bath and steps into it, laying their towels out on the edge. She doesn’t know how to feel, but it’s clear to Pidge that this is the first time she’s done something so distinctively feminine with another girl. Something about it makes her feel lighter, with an absent weight that she can’t explain.

Pidge thinks she might be able to enjoy this time alone, with Allura.

…

Spying on Shiro and Allura’s conversations when they think she isn’t around seems to become a new hobby for Pidge. There are so many things that the two of them try to protect her from and a distinct candid vulnerability that the seem to share with one another that is absent when she is around them.

So, she entertains herself after their visit to the bathhouse with a game of _Connect Four_ with Hako, to which she finds him to be an extremely sore loser, before she tiptoes her way up the stairs and towards their room.

“It’s not safe, Allura.” Shiro’s voice is insistent. It seems Allura has just breached the subject of visiting their ship, though it is a necessary venture that they will have to take sooner or later.

Pidge kneels down and folds her legs over one another as she sits by the base of the door, listening. “Pidge has gone alone through the vines _twice_. If it wasn’t safe enough to send her, then you wouldn’t have done it.”

“Fine.” A beat. “It’s not safe enough for you, though.”

In the dimming light, Pidge pictures the way Shiro’s eyes must have locked onto the space of Allura’s neck. Several days later, the color is almost imperceptibly different from the rest of her skin. It’s unfortunate that the sight of it on Shiro’s eyes hasn’t quite healed as fast.

“I’ll be fine. We really need to see the ship, and if Laeli has been kind enough to invite us, then we can’t decline.”

The silence makes her worry, because she wonders if there is something wrong. Something that she can’t hear, or glances being shared between the two of them, but then light pours in overhead as the door is wrenched open.

Shiro nearly trips headlong over her in the doorway, yelling as he stumbles into the hall. “Pidge,” he lifts his hand to his heart for a moment before offering it to her, “holy—what are you doing down there?”

Cheeks red, Pidge takes Shiro’s hand and mumbles something so low that he doesn’t question her. She slips into the room past him with the sudden urge to tug her hair around her face, if only it was still at length to accomplish the task.

Allura simply watches her carve out a spot amongst their blankets on the floor and allows her to sink into the silence without any lingering questions.

She supposes they’ll visit the ship in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was a little underwhelming to compensate for all of the drama in the next part :)


End file.
